For many, the Doukhobor story is a sensational one: arson, nudity and civil disobedience once made headlines. But it isn't the whole story. Our Backs Warmed by the Sun: Memories of a Doukhobor Life is an intricately woven, richly textured memoir of a family's determination to live in peace and community in the face of controversy and unrest. When author Vera Maloff set out to find the truth about her family's history, she knew something of the struggles of living a pacifist, agrarian life in a world with opposing values. To find the bones of that history she turned to her mother Elizabeth, who, in her nineties, had forgotten nothing. In Our Backs Warmed by the Sun, the author, through the stories of her mother, describes a wholly activist life. The Doukhobors--both the Sons of Freedom and moderate sects--led anti-military protests throughout the early 1900s, harboured draft dodgers in the 60s, and stood up for their beliefs. In response, they were hosed down, arrested, and jailed. Vera learns of the confusion and fear when, as a child, Elizabeth and her family were interned in an abandoned logging camp while their father served time in Oakalla prison for charges related to a peaceful protest, and of her loneliness when, later, she was institutionalized--one of a series of Canadian government efforts in assimilation. By removing the children, it was believed, the cycle of protest and resistance could be broken. Tracing the Doukhobor movement from Russia, the author explores the spiritual influence of its leaders. She does not shy away from the controversial actions of the Sons of Freedom in the darkest days of bombings and arson, or the toll on families and communities, probing with a historian's curiosity and a daughter's tenderness. Elizabeth's story is also one of a small but thriving Kootenay community, and of the experiences of a family who stood by their beliefs. Laughter, ingenuity and tenacity are offered up in the pages of Our Backs Warmed by the Sun, an important and engaging window into our collective history.

This book is published in English. Following the completion of his major novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis that led him to denounce the privileges of his social class and its attendant material wealth and embrace the simple rural life of the peasantry. In the persecuted Russian Doukhobor sect, who also rejected militarism and church ritual in favour of finding God in their hearts, he saw a prime example of how it was possible to live his new-found pacifist ideals in everyday life. He was so taken with their lifestyle, calling the Doukhobors “people of the 25th century,” that, in 1898, he decided to help finance their mass emigration to Canada, away from the persecutions of the Russian church and state. Donskov’s expanded study presents an outline of Doukhobor history and beliefs, their harmony with Tolstoy’s lifelong aim of “unity of people”, and the portrayal of Doukhobors in Tolstoy’s writings. This edition features Tolstoy’s complete correspondence with Doukhobor leader Pëtr Vasil’evich Verigin. Three guest essays by prominent Canadian Doukhobors are also included. Supported by a considerable array of source materials, Donskov’s monograph will be of relevance to anyone interested in religious, philosophical, sociological, pacifist, historical, or literary studies.

A poignant tale of a family's search for the sun. In the mountain villages of Norway the sun sets in September and almost completely disappears until March. This season of dark feelings and dark skies is a bleak time, filled with longing for the brightness of spring.

The author, who at 32 years old experienced early menopause, chronicles her tireless efforts to adopt a Guatemalan child, including uprooting her life and moving to Antigua in order to navigate the thorny adoption process and finally bring her daughter home. Original.

I finished my psychoanalysis in 1991. It took about six years. Psychoanalysis was hard work, and I always imagined that finishing would feel like graduation—a cause for celebrating. I certainly felt pride at having faced my darkest fears. At times I thought of analysis as a graduate degree in self-knowledge. In some ways leaving T. (the first letter of my therapist’s last name) felt like when I left Memphis, my home town, and went a thousand miles northeast to college. I often said that I was relieved to be leaving my family—and 25 year later my analyst—to become independent. But in both cases I was afraid and at times homesick. This is a book about the first 15 months of my psychoanalysis. This book covers what T. called the “material” of my analysis—basically my life story. But it is also about the evolution of my relationship with T. My vision of my personal history changed radically in the course of analysis. But most of these changes were produced not by the ritual telling and retelling of events from my life but rather from the feelings I developed for T. For those who are considering seeking help from a therapist, I hope this account will give you the courage to make the plunge. For those people already in therapy, the purpose of this book is to offer encouragement. No matter how difficult or complicated your life may seem, it is possible to change things for the better. And for practicing therapists, and men and women training to become therapists, I hope this book helps you better understand your patients’ vulnerability and the tremendous power for good you have for the people who come to you for help.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.

Ayam tells the tale of Rashid, a Bangalore-based business management student who, upon first meeting, Ayam, develops a crush on her. He indulges his passion by tracking Ayam's where about on social media, employing technology, and manipulating individuals in her life to eliminate roadblocks to their romance. With the exception of a few completely fictitious sections, the novel is inspired by actual occurrences.